Students highly commended at young innovator awards for ‘best ever robot’ idea

A Harrogate student was one of a trio from The Grammar School at Leeds (GSAL) who earned recognition for a futuristic idea to help conquer that ever-growing ‘to do’ list – a robot named Pheobe R.

The planning, helping, organising, excellent, best ever robot (Phoebe R for short) was dreamed up by Year 8 pupils Laura Memmott, from Pannal, Jenni Greenfield, from Bramhope, and Nikita Bharath, from Leeds, who have been highly commended in the inaugural Young Innovator of the Year Awards.

Front to back: Nikita Bharath, Jenni Greenfield, and Laura Memmott

The awards, run by Harper Adams University, are aimed at 11-19 year olds who are interested in design and innovation. Entrants had to suggest a new way that robots might help us in the future and design a robot for that purpose, presenting the idea as a poster, video or web page.

From around 1,000 entries, 50 were shortlisted and their creators invited to the Young Innovator of the Year Awards ceremony at Harper Adams. As well as being shortlisted in the team category, Jenni, Nikita and Laura’s video earned them Highly Commended in the Best School/College category. Jason Bradbury of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show presented the awards.

Jenni, Nikita and Laura came up with the idea for Phoebe R in their ICT lessons at school, and then worked together at home to film their video showing how Phoebe could get you organised, from waking you up in the morning to reminding you to do your homework.

Laura said: We’re all forgetful and a little bit disorganised and Phoebe R solves that problem – it will remember everything for you.

Jenni said: It was a lovely surprise to get shortlisted, we really just did the robot for fun!

Tim Street, head of ICT and computing at GSAL, said: Jenni, Nikita and Laura worked very hard to produce their video for the competition. They worked well in a team, at lunchtimes, breaks, before and after school to meet the deadline, and I’m very pleased that their entry was shortlisted.